Cosmo Questions - URGENT!

[Tidduneu]

Hello I am translating FF7 PC to my national language (Polish), but I have some problems due to the translation:

I am using Cosmo, and I encountered a problem -
There are so many archives inside flevel.lgp, that I can't know what is for the Midgar City.

So here's my questions.

Can someone post a description or each archive? Ex. from where location is text included in anctfrst3?? Please??

Also I have another questions - In what archive do you find menu texts, item names, materia names or more? If in some other lgp archive, please tell in what file there? Also a enemy attacks and you're attacks and battle messages if you can, because I can't find them.

[dziugo]

Hello there,

I'm from Poland too, but i think it would be better to talk in English .

First of all:
If you're willing to translate the ff7, check this page: (links are allowed?)
Subarashi Fantasy
"Final Fantasy VII PL" subpage. There you can find information about this project (+how to join it), and few files to patch your game to contain some PL texts.

If you want to start on your own...

There are so many archives inside flevel.lgp, that I can't know what is for the Midgar City.

Mainly, those which name start with "md".

Can someone post a description or each archive? Ex. from where location is text included in anctfrst3??

Usually it isn't hard to find out form which location the text come from, by looking at it name (as for the "anctfrs3" - Ancient Forest? ), or reading the text it contains.

In what archive do you find menu texts

In PC version, menu text is build-in the main executable. You can use some hex-editor to edit it (it's "encoded" btw, to get the "real" character it represents, you must add 0x20 to it (or 32 in decimal) - search the forum to find info about it, 'coz my explanation is a bit confusing).

item names, materia names or more? If in some other lgp archive, please tell in what file there? Also a enemy attacks and you're attacks and battle messages if you can, because I can't find them.

AFAIK, the kernel2.bin (or kernel.bin...).

It's a big amount of text... guess you're really into the ff7 . Also... to translate text, use M4v3r's "Sapphire" (Cosmo is a great tool, but it's a bit bugged...). BTW: M4v3r (or Maver) coordinates the whole FF7PL project, wrote LOTS of tools to help in translation process, and is really a nice guy . I don't know if it's him, who you should contact now to join the project (I wrote to him 2 weeks ago willing to rejoin the project, but didn't receive any response), but it's worth trying (i think...).

dziugo

[RPGillespie]

Hey, cosmo takes forever, so I used M4v3r's Sapphire instead. I edited ALL of the swearwords in FF7 in a matter of hours. and plus the level files are exported to txt.

Sapphire

[edit] oops, dziugo, didn't see the last part of your post. but yeah! sapphire rocks!

[Tidduneu]

I used Sapphire, but I rather use Cosmo instead, it's not buggy to me, and have a previewer,music previewer and background previewer.

Thanks for your solution dziugo, but I rather start a new project than joining a Subarashii one and I knew about that project a long ago so...

I want to start it for myself, not joining a group of 20 people...

Don't think of me as an idiot, I just like translating and all.

And I will credit myself too:P

Translating FFVII isn't that hard, even for a one people.

Of course I am not copying any of Subarashii properties, Iam doing it's for myself.


Thanks for all!

P.S. And I don't wanna wait a month to FFVII PL Project to respond it to me, and I wanna do it for myself!!

P.S2: I figured about from where text is, by checking the Cosmo background viewer. Sapphire is a bit cool, but I rather Cosmo, if I will have problems with Cosmo - time to use Sapphire..

Many many thanks to you!

[dziugo]

Good luck then

Oh... maybe one more thing. If you didn't change the font to display polish characters (Ä…, Ä™...) better do it now. It'll be more complicated to do so, when the translation is complete (rewriting all dialogs to contain polish chars... blah...).

One more time: Good luck

dziugo

[antigrib]

PLEASE ! Somybody help... I've translated FF7 on russian , but in game text looks like ^^@#%# Whats wrong? Mail me or ICQ: 246-428-819
     

[antigrib]

Heh, dziugo , how can i do that ?

[dziugo]

OK

Let's assume that I've read all your messages (for now, don't send me any, please) and I'm working on writing an answer. Check this post from time to time. The answer should be here sooner or later.

dziugo

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Edit:

OK, here it goes (it's more like TechRelated but... oh well...):

The problem is, that you didn't change the font at all, and FF7 just display IT's characters instead od russian ones.

The font is located in (for english version of FF7) menu_us.lgp archive in "data\menu" directory. For high resolution the name of files you need to change are:
 - usfont_a_h.tex
 - usfont_b_h.tex
Use ficedula's "LGPTools" to extract them, then mirex's "biturn" to convert it to bitmap, and...

Now you have to change EVERY SINGLE character that is displayed incorretly. If it displays '$' instead of some russian-character, you have to edit it (MSPaint rulez ). Be sure, to write down the length (width in pixels) of every character that had changed, and their "index" - just count, which character is it.
f.e.
 - '!' - 0x01 (or 1 decimal)
 - '+' - 0x0B (or 11 decimal)
 - 'A' - 0x21 (or 33 decimal)

After that pack it back into the menu_us.lgp (again, "bitrun" to convert to *.tex and "LGPTools" to pack it).

Now you have to edit character's width. It's the third file of WINDOW.BIN file ("data\kernel" directory) - it's structure is explained in "gears" (just 3 files packed with gzip and glued together). Details about that file will be here:
http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=4417

I know it sounds difficult, but if you read about it (Qhimm's forum, "gears") it won't be.

If you have any more questions, make a topic in TechRelated or PM me (once please ).

Good luck,
dziugo

[antigrib]

Oh, ìàòü åãî èòèòü, I will tray to understand This =))

[dziugo]

I was thinking of writing a program, that will do the "dirty job" with changing the font... But then I realised, that this is an operation (I mean changing the font) that needs to be performed only once so... Maybe there will be one, someday, but now...

I think I'll leave FF7 behind for a while (New Diablo2 Ladder ).

dziugo

[kini]

ihave a problem with cosmo, when i open it all i get is a smll window openignup but i cant do anythign withi it,

[dziugo]

Can we get some screenshot? 'coz i don't know (for sure) if I understand what you have just written...

[Reunion]

Open the FICEDULA.INI in your windows dir then under [Cosmo] set the
Top=0
Left=0
Then you should be able to see the main window...

[Tidduneu]

@dziugo: Thanks, I am asking MaV for letting me using his font. I am doing the translating again, because when you use Cosmo - the flevel.lgp grows about 2 times bigger, but If you use Sapphire and rewriting archives tool - there's only a bit bigger.

I made a patch translating cosmo and that patch had... 100mb!! and more, so I am translating with Sapphire, instead.

I must do the locations faq, though:P

Hey, can someone tell me from where I will find:

- Menu texts
- Battle texts
- Item names
- Attack names

I asked it, but I didn't find them.
Any specified solutions?

P.S. Still waiting for MaV to let me use his font:)

[dziugo]

Hiho

I kinda knew that there could be problems with finding those texts...

First of all... FF7 uses a text format called FF-Text-Format. It's somehow differrent than the one we're using every day. Take a look at this (C/C++ string):

"Hello world\0"

Just a simple sentence. It's hexadecimal form is:

0x48 0x65 0x6C 0x6C 0x6F 0x20 0x77 0x6F 0x72 0x6C 0x64 0x00

But in FF-Text-Format it will be:

"(ELLO\0WORLD "
or
0x28 0x45 0x4C 0x4C 0x4F 0x00 0x57 0x4F 0x52 0x4C 0x44 0xFF

To convert a sentence from the "normal" format to FFTF you have to subtract from each byte a fixed value (0x20 or 32 in decimal). To convert from FFTF to "normal" format, we just add 0x20 to every byte. But... strings are NULL-terminated, and FFTF strings ends with 0xFF. Guess that's it for FFTF.

Now... where to find Menu-text? In ff7.exe. Let's take some text from menu...

'Save' for example
It's "Save\0" in normal format and "3AVE " in FFTF. Now, all you have to do, is to find all the occurences of "3AVE " (0x33 0x41 0x56 0x45 0xFF) and change it to... let's say "Zapis", which is ":APIS" (0x3A 0x41 0x50 0x49 0x53 0xFF). And that's it. You should see the 'Zapis' instead of 'Save' in your FF7-Menu.

As for the rest (never tested it though... info from "gears")

Battle-texts and Item-names are in kernel2.bin file (single file compressed with LZS).

Attack names are in scene.bin file.

I've seen tools to edit scene.bin file (used to edit monsters' stats), but i don't remember if they could change text also...

Oh... one more thing... Remember that Mav's font displays our special characters instead of some other characters which could be useful (well... for Cid's swearing mostly ). Be sure, to use Mav's correct mail btw... (not the WP one ).

dziugo

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Edit:
What is "locations faq"?

[kini]

Open the FICEDULA.INI in your windows dir then under [Cosmo] set the
Top=0
Left=0
Then you should be able to see the main window...

thank you so much it works great, i tryed to change the configuration but i didnt know it was in the windows dir

[Cazador]

hey I heard that the Weapon Names and items, etc are in Kernel2.bin....how can I open this file?

[dziugo]

hey I heard that the Weapon Names and items, etc are in Kernel2.bin....how can I open this file?

Un-LZS it (the file starts with a 4-byte header which isn't really needed ).

dziugo